Scrabble Club / March 12, 2026

Mark brought a Black Forest cake to the Club to celebrate my birthday. To commemorate our recent trip to Brazil, he had the greeting put on in Portuguese:

This was our first time back at the Club since February 5. I won all three of my games to take my record to 52-5:

452-373 against Jonathan. I drew to play first and chose six vowels and a blank on my first pick, so exchanged five. My replacement draw was almost as bad as I picked four vowels with an S and held EIIOSU?. I couldn’t even make a vowel dump since the only consonant Jonathan gave me on his first move was an N, so I exchanged again. I should have looked harder as there was an easy 8LW with that rack, UNIOnISE. In my notation the only 8LW I could find was dIEcIOUS. That rack also makes ExImIOUS. Why would I see the oddball dIEcIOUS and not the ordinary UNIOnISE especially when there was an N available? I then was overrun with consonants, yet managed to play the bingo SaNTIMS (68) then EReLONG (67). I struggled with IOPSTY? yet couldn’t find any 7LW, which are cOPYIST, ISOTYPe, PIOSiTY and ISOToPY. I definitely knew those words but my mind was on a bingo lane that had to end in -E, and there are no 8LW with that rack that end in -E. The E 8LW are bIOTYPES, ISOTYPEs and PEYOTISm. Jonathan played SEAMING (88).

487-306 against Charles. Charles opened with TONGE (14)* which I didn’t like and held him on it. My opening rack was CDEILOP which anagrams to POLICED. I realized that if I challenged TONGE off, I could score 80 for POLICED. However, if by chance TONGE was acceptable, then Charles would play again and perhaps ruin my opportunity to play my bingo. I realized that if I let TONGE stay, then I could play POLICED / TONGED for 72. I did go through the possible 8LW that CDEILOP makes, but only saw COMPILED and COMPLIED. That rack also builds through a U to make CLUPEOID and UPCOILED. I decided to let his phony stay so I could be sure of playing my bingo. I thus turned his phony into a legitimate word. I also played ESTATES (76) and DIRIMENt (91). Charles played RINgERS (64).

448-355 against Ramona. Ramona held her own during this game, as she was ahead during the first four turns. After we each played a bingo, she was only behind by 2. My first bingo was EUlOGIA (66) and Ramona played ROOSTING (70). I later sealed the win during an overall close game with NEUTRInO (58).